as meant to be a long one; but God
disposes all things; and one morning, near Westminster Bridge, whom
should he come across but the very sergeant who had recruited him at
first! What followed? He himself indicated cavalierly that he had then
resigned. Let us put it so. But these resignations are sometimes very
trying.

At length, after having delighted us for hours, he took himself away
from the companion; and I could ask Mackay who and what he was. "That?"
said Mackay. "Why, that's one of the stowaways."

"No man," said the same authority, "who has had anything to do with the
sea, would ever think of paying for a passage." I give the statement as
Mackay's, without endorsement; yet I am tempted to believe that it
contains a grain of truth; and if you add that the man shall be impudent
and thievish, or else dead-broke, it may even pass for a fair
representation of the facts. We gentlemen of England who live at home at
ease have, I suspect, very insufficient ideas on the subject. All the
world over, people are stowing away in coal-holes and dark corners, and
when ships are once out to sea, appearing again, begrimed and bashful,
upon deck. The career of these sea-tramps partakes largely of the
adventurous. They may be poisoned by coal-gas, or die by starvation in
their place of concealment; or when found they may be clapped at once
and ignominiously into irons, thus to be carried to their promised land,
the port of destination, and alas! brought back in the same way to that
from which they started, and there delivered over to the magistrates and
the seclusion of a county jail. Since I crossed the Atlantic, one
miserable stowaway was found in a dying state among the fuel, uttered
but a word or two, and departed for a farther country than America.

When the stowaway appears on deck, he has but one thing to pray for:
that he be set to work, which is the price and sign of his forgiveness.
After half an hour with a swab or a bucket, he feels himself as secure
as if he had paid for his passage. It is not altogether a bad thing for
the company, who get more or less efficient hands for nothing but a few
plates of junk and duff; and every now and again find themselves better
paid than by a whole family of cabin passengers. Not long ago, for
instance, a packet was saved from nearly certain loss by the skill and
courage of a stowaway engineer. As was no more than just, a handsome
subscription rewarded him for his success; but even